Monday, June 21, 2010
Gone But Not Forgotten
When I first received my fellowship, I deluded myself into thinking that I would take advantage of my return to reach out to my former colleagues at Underwood High School. I regaled my advisor with tales of how I would capitalize upon my connections to organize field trips intended to supplement their social studies and science classes. I assumed it would be easy. And even if, for some reason, I was unable to contact anyone familiar at Underwood, the organization that arranged for my initial placement has its headquarters within easy walking distance of my office. It would be child's play.
But as is so often the case, these elegant plans shattered when confronted with the realities of academic life. There was no time in the fall to make connections, especially given my departure for Europe. By the time I got back, the pressure to buckle down and start writing had grown impossible to ignore. One chapter, two chapters...the clock kept on ticking, and before I knew it I was two-thirds of the way into a third chapter and the school year was almost over. With field trips now pretty much out of the question, I contacted one of my former colleagues to see if there were any professional development days left on the calendar so I could visit without disrupting classes. He informed there was only one left. Today. The final day of school, when teachers clean out their classrooms before enjoying those three most beautiful parts of being a public educator: June, July, and August. Granted, the first of these had practically vanished thanks to the recent Snowpocalypse, but still I thought it best to stop by earlier in the day...maybe around lunchtime...to say hello to my old colleagues. "How many of them would remember me?" I wondered. Or worse: What if they did remember me, but resented the fact that I had abandoned them to retreat to the ivory tower? What would they say when they saw me?
I have, in the past, described my time at Underwood using the metaphor of a veteran in the trenches during the first World War. Grueling conditions, slow progress, occasional alcohol rations to dull the pain. In many ways, it's a surprisingly apt comparison. And as I walked up to the crenellated battlements of Underwood once again, I wondered how often soldiers who somehow received a permanent exemption from military service went back while the war was still ongoing. However many there were, I assumed they would notice changes in the terrain, just as I was surprised to note that the building near the parking lot which was under construction the last time I was there (and supposedly fell over during a windstorm onto an administrator's car) now housed a snack stand and a cell phone store. There were banners fluttering outside, one of the recent graduating classes' gift to the school, I imagined. After waiting a moment for traffic, as I had hundreds of times before, I walked up the stairs and saw the front doors were unlocked.
Back in the trenches we go, boys!
The first thing I noticed was that the school police had set up a checkpoint in the front foyer, right under the facsimile statue of Winged Victory. I didn't know if any of the three officers remembered me, but I explained that I was a former teacher and that I was there to visit some colleagues. They pointed me toward the auditorium, which the last time I had visited was still under reconstruction. (Not, I should note, as a result of the fire which I had observed therein...) It seemed that my former principal, Ms. Oldman, was holding a meeting. This was typical of how things were in my very earliest days at Underwood before the roof collapse ruled out the possibility of school assemblies. Now it was open once again, and she was holding court, enthusiastically presenting a PowerPoint outlining strategies--doubtless conceived in some administrator's office down at district HQ-- to improve test scores and improve classroom instruction. It was like I had never left.
My plan was simple. The entirety of the faculty was gathered in the auditorium. I would sit in the back quietly until the meeting wrapped up and then greet my former coworkers. This was an infiltration operation, plain and simple, and I figured it would be an easy mission to pull off. After all, it has been a long time since most of these people saw me, and time has ravaged my once youthful features. (As I joked later, when I recently uncovered my old school district ID, I discovered that at that time I still had a full head of hair.) Besides, if memory served, Ms. Oldman loved public speaking. If she could maintain her focus while commanding the attention an auditorium filled with rowdy high school students, she wouldn't be distracted by the arrival of a former faculty member. All I had to do was blend in and disappear. Be invisible.
For three years at Underwood, I tried to capture the attention of my students, their parents, and, at times, other faculty members, to no avail. It was this sense of powerlessness that led to the title of this very blog, which would serve, I thought as a place for me to voice my discontent and frustration at a system which, it seemed, ignored my efforts and those of other teachers in my position. We were people who got into the business for all the right reasons and due to a combination of factors watched our idealism die by inches. And what was worse, no one would acknowledge these challenges, or worse, they would do so and either ignore the problem or offer solutions which complicated matters further. Invisibility was our curse, but as I learned well before my arrival at Underwood, it can also be a blessing. Invisibility allows one to be an unnoticed observer, to go places where people normally don't expect, and uncover the hidden workings driving the machinery of life. So I embraced my invisibility and turned it from a weakness to a strength. I might not have been able to enact an educational revolution, but at least I could report on what I saw and point out what needed to be fixed from the inside.
I was the invisible Ben.
When I walked into the auditorium, I expected to remain that way. But I had hardly taken three steps into the room when Ms. Oldman saw me standing in the back and called out my name.
I may have been invisible once...but today, I was the visible Ben, and I have to say, it was among the strangest moments I have ever experienced.
I tried to sit down quietly and avoid the spotlight. But almost as soon as I sat down, Ms. Oldman beckoned me to the front of the room for a hug. As I walked down the aisle, inclined downward towards the stage, I saw familiar faces on both sides of me. The history teachers with whom I had eaten lunch so many times, the heads of the math and English departments (both long no longer in those positions, I found out later), my fellow science teachers, and even a few administrators with whom I had been on friendly terms. I received a few handshakes as I moved towards the front. It was almost like being a celebrity or a VIP, a sensation which would not diminish after my hugging the principal. Just as soon as I retreated to my seat, she proceeded to regale the entire audience with my background. She explained for the benefit of the half of the audience who was completely confused who this gangly-looking outsider was that I had arrived at Underwood at the same time as her, the first and only member of my particular teaching program to join the staff that year. At the time she and nearly everyone else had thought the students would eat me alive. "But..." she said. "He proved us wrong." She talked about my reputation for the occasional zany experiment and specifically referred to my successful efforts to organize an egg drop competition for students in the front lobby.
On the one hand, I was flattered. She clearly had not forgotten me nor taken my instructional efforts for granted, and the looks of recognition from the teachers who had been there at the time suggested that my legacy, such as it was, had not completely vanished from the hallways of Underwood High. Yet at the same time, my joy at the praise felt undeserved. True, I had achieved some minor triumphs during my tenure as a science teacher, but in the end, I elected to abandon my post. It didn't quite seem right to hear my former boss gushing with praise about my performance when in a few hours, I would disappear once more into the shadow realm of archives in which I spend most of my time, leaving Underwood to its fate.
As it was, thanks to this speech, I was the visible Ben for the remainder of my afternoon at Underwood. Ms. Oldman wrapped up her meeting as I chatted with my friend the former math department head about my life, job options, and a few of our former colleagues, and we adjourned to library for lunch. I stood in line and saw my old lab technician. We chatted about old times, including the loss of the school's supply of elemental potassium the year after I left and the EPA's continued success since then in preventing any further alkali metals to be utilized in the classroom. (Sorry kids...no more throwing pieces of sodium into the sink!) Then it was time to chat with the mock trial coach about the status of this year's team (not great) and next year's prospects (outstanding). I also learned that there were multiple people from my teaching program at the school now, but none of them felt like sticking around to chat very long. (I don't blame them...not on the last day of school.)
I settled in at a library table with science and social studies teachers, just like I had at so many professional development events years before. It reminded me of the I had making activity sheets or playing board games to cope with the indoctrination. (To paraphrase one teacher, Goebbels could learn a thing or two about propaganda from Underwood's professional development meetings.) For a moment, my mind flashed back to the happy times I had at Underwood and for the first time in a while I questioned whether I had made the right decision to leave. But then we got to talking, and I began to remember the grim realities of the situation. I learned about the school's efforts to expand inclusion of special education students in regular classes, a process which they had apparently decided to "simplify" by having multiple teachers for a single class period. The daily schedule continued to be adjusted, though to what end no one could say. Arrangements were made for an extra prep period and the rotating first period block which had been under discussion the last time I stopped in had been tried and phased out from the schedule. And then there was the violence. One social studies teacher informed me that a student had spit on him and then bit him on the arm and that he had pressed charges. The ninth graders apparently are worse than ever, driving even veteran teachers over the edge.
People tended to ask me the same series of questions. They asked about my research. Then they asked about what I intended to do once I earned a degree. A few asked about my family or other teachers who had left at the same time I did. And a handful asked whether or not I would return to Underwood someday to pick up where I had left off. Most of these questions were straightforward enough, but the last one was tricky because the speaker had meant it sincerely. This was not a joke to them. They actively wanted me to come back and rejoin the fold. It was as though they were saying, "We know you left us, but there's always a place for you here. You can always come back." And what startled me was that there was a piece of me that wished to return to the classroom and its associated camaraderie. There is, after all, nothing like the esprit de corps that emerges from shared struggle against imposing odds.
Yet I also knew, despite such feelings, that while the possibility exists that I would return to Underwood, it is an extremely small one. As I explained to my colleagues, the life of a graduate student or a professional academic may be stressful, but the stress is of a different nature entirely than that of the classroom I had left behind. After teaching classes where students participated actively in discussions without throwing things, yelling profanities, or necessitating phone calls home, the idea of returning to the trenches just is not compelling, and that, after all, is an intrinsic part of the Underwood experience. So when my colleagues asked me if I would come back after getting my Ph.D., I deferred, suggesting that it would depend upon the job market while all the while reaffirming that in this case, the past would not necessarily serve as prologue.
After a little while, the library emptied out. I walked down the hallway past my former classroom, which still had colorful decals of the nine planets scotch taped over the doorway despite having been converted into what I think was an English classroom...or maybe math? It was hard to tell with everything packed away. A few more goodbyes followed, including a promise to return (if asked) for Career Day, though I wonder how many students will really be interested in learning more about the exciting life of a graduate student.
Finally, I stopped in the office to bid farewell to my principal one last time before her summer vacation started and my dissertation work continued. Unlike my old job, where there was often a very clear delineation between work and leisure time, as an academic, it's less clearcut. And so as I walked out of Underwood on that first day of summer, I knew that while my former colleagues had all sorts of vacation plans in the works, I had the same strange blend of activities, both social and academic which go into refining a dissertation, in my future. This is the life I have chosen, the life that could have earned me scorn from my former colleagues but didn't, and to which I return to all the same, hoping that eventually my work will be remembered with equal fondness in both contexts.
When I first received my fellowship, I deluded myself into thinking that I would take advantage of my return to reach out to my former colleagues at Underwood High School. I regaled my advisor with tales of how I would capitalize upon my connections to organize field trips intended to supplement their social studies and science classes. I assumed it would be easy. And even if, for some reason, I was unable to contact anyone familiar at Underwood, the organization that arranged for my initial placement has its headquarters within easy walking distance of my office. It would be child's play.
But as is so often the case, these elegant plans shattered when confronted with the realities of academic life. There was no time in the fall to make connections, especially given my departure for Europe. By the time I got back, the pressure to buckle down and start writing had grown impossible to ignore. One chapter, two chapters...the clock kept on ticking, and before I knew it I was two-thirds of the way into a third chapter and the school year was almost over. With field trips now pretty much out of the question, I contacted one of my former colleagues to see if there were any professional development days left on the calendar so I could visit without disrupting classes. He informed there was only one left. Today. The final day of school, when teachers clean out their classrooms before enjoying those three most beautiful parts of being a public educator: June, July, and August. Granted, the first of these had practically vanished thanks to the recent Snowpocalypse, but still I thought it best to stop by earlier in the day...maybe around lunchtime...to say hello to my old colleagues. "How many of them would remember me?" I wondered. Or worse: What if they did remember me, but resented the fact that I had abandoned them to retreat to the ivory tower? What would they say when they saw me?
I have, in the past, described my time at Underwood using the metaphor of a veteran in the trenches during the first World War. Grueling conditions, slow progress, occasional alcohol rations to dull the pain. In many ways, it's a surprisingly apt comparison. And as I walked up to the crenellated battlements of Underwood once again, I wondered how often soldiers who somehow received a permanent exemption from military service went back while the war was still ongoing. However many there were, I assumed they would notice changes in the terrain, just as I was surprised to note that the building near the parking lot which was under construction the last time I was there (and supposedly fell over during a windstorm onto an administrator's car) now housed a snack stand and a cell phone store. There were banners fluttering outside, one of the recent graduating classes' gift to the school, I imagined. After waiting a moment for traffic, as I had hundreds of times before, I walked up the stairs and saw the front doors were unlocked.
Back in the trenches we go, boys!
The first thing I noticed was that the school police had set up a checkpoint in the front foyer, right under the facsimile statue of Winged Victory. I didn't know if any of the three officers remembered me, but I explained that I was a former teacher and that I was there to visit some colleagues. They pointed me toward the auditorium, which the last time I had visited was still under reconstruction. (Not, I should note, as a result of the fire which I had observed therein...) It seemed that my former principal, Ms. Oldman, was holding a meeting. This was typical of how things were in my very earliest days at Underwood before the roof collapse ruled out the possibility of school assemblies. Now it was open once again, and she was holding court, enthusiastically presenting a PowerPoint outlining strategies--doubtless conceived in some administrator's office down at district HQ-- to improve test scores and improve classroom instruction. It was like I had never left.
My plan was simple. The entirety of the faculty was gathered in the auditorium. I would sit in the back quietly until the meeting wrapped up and then greet my former coworkers. This was an infiltration operation, plain and simple, and I figured it would be an easy mission to pull off. After all, it has been a long time since most of these people saw me, and time has ravaged my once youthful features. (As I joked later, when I recently uncovered my old school district ID, I discovered that at that time I still had a full head of hair.) Besides, if memory served, Ms. Oldman loved public speaking. If she could maintain her focus while commanding the attention an auditorium filled with rowdy high school students, she wouldn't be distracted by the arrival of a former faculty member. All I had to do was blend in and disappear. Be invisible.
For three years at Underwood, I tried to capture the attention of my students, their parents, and, at times, other faculty members, to no avail. It was this sense of powerlessness that led to the title of this very blog, which would serve, I thought as a place for me to voice my discontent and frustration at a system which, it seemed, ignored my efforts and those of other teachers in my position. We were people who got into the business for all the right reasons and due to a combination of factors watched our idealism die by inches. And what was worse, no one would acknowledge these challenges, or worse, they would do so and either ignore the problem or offer solutions which complicated matters further. Invisibility was our curse, but as I learned well before my arrival at Underwood, it can also be a blessing. Invisibility allows one to be an unnoticed observer, to go places where people normally don't expect, and uncover the hidden workings driving the machinery of life. So I embraced my invisibility and turned it from a weakness to a strength. I might not have been able to enact an educational revolution, but at least I could report on what I saw and point out what needed to be fixed from the inside.
I was the invisible Ben.
When I walked into the auditorium, I expected to remain that way. But I had hardly taken three steps into the room when Ms. Oldman saw me standing in the back and called out my name.
I may have been invisible once...but today, I was the visible Ben, and I have to say, it was among the strangest moments I have ever experienced.
I tried to sit down quietly and avoid the spotlight. But almost as soon as I sat down, Ms. Oldman beckoned me to the front of the room for a hug. As I walked down the aisle, inclined downward towards the stage, I saw familiar faces on both sides of me. The history teachers with whom I had eaten lunch so many times, the heads of the math and English departments (both long no longer in those positions, I found out later), my fellow science teachers, and even a few administrators with whom I had been on friendly terms. I received a few handshakes as I moved towards the front. It was almost like being a celebrity or a VIP, a sensation which would not diminish after my hugging the principal. Just as soon as I retreated to my seat, she proceeded to regale the entire audience with my background. She explained for the benefit of the half of the audience who was completely confused who this gangly-looking outsider was that I had arrived at Underwood at the same time as her, the first and only member of my particular teaching program to join the staff that year. At the time she and nearly everyone else had thought the students would eat me alive. "But..." she said. "He proved us wrong." She talked about my reputation for the occasional zany experiment and specifically referred to my successful efforts to organize an egg drop competition for students in the front lobby.
On the one hand, I was flattered. She clearly had not forgotten me nor taken my instructional efforts for granted, and the looks of recognition from the teachers who had been there at the time suggested that my legacy, such as it was, had not completely vanished from the hallways of Underwood High. Yet at the same time, my joy at the praise felt undeserved. True, I had achieved some minor triumphs during my tenure as a science teacher, but in the end, I elected to abandon my post. It didn't quite seem right to hear my former boss gushing with praise about my performance when in a few hours, I would disappear once more into the shadow realm of archives in which I spend most of my time, leaving Underwood to its fate.
As it was, thanks to this speech, I was the visible Ben for the remainder of my afternoon at Underwood. Ms. Oldman wrapped up her meeting as I chatted with my friend the former math department head about my life, job options, and a few of our former colleagues, and we adjourned to library for lunch. I stood in line and saw my old lab technician. We chatted about old times, including the loss of the school's supply of elemental potassium the year after I left and the EPA's continued success since then in preventing any further alkali metals to be utilized in the classroom. (Sorry kids...no more throwing pieces of sodium into the sink!) Then it was time to chat with the mock trial coach about the status of this year's team (not great) and next year's prospects (outstanding). I also learned that there were multiple people from my teaching program at the school now, but none of them felt like sticking around to chat very long. (I don't blame them...not on the last day of school.)
I settled in at a library table with science and social studies teachers, just like I had at so many professional development events years before. It reminded me of the I had making activity sheets or playing board games to cope with the indoctrination. (To paraphrase one teacher, Goebbels could learn a thing or two about propaganda from Underwood's professional development meetings.) For a moment, my mind flashed back to the happy times I had at Underwood and for the first time in a while I questioned whether I had made the right decision to leave. But then we got to talking, and I began to remember the grim realities of the situation. I learned about the school's efforts to expand inclusion of special education students in regular classes, a process which they had apparently decided to "simplify" by having multiple teachers for a single class period. The daily schedule continued to be adjusted, though to what end no one could say. Arrangements were made for an extra prep period and the rotating first period block which had been under discussion the last time I stopped in had been tried and phased out from the schedule. And then there was the violence. One social studies teacher informed me that a student had spit on him and then bit him on the arm and that he had pressed charges. The ninth graders apparently are worse than ever, driving even veteran teachers over the edge.
People tended to ask me the same series of questions. They asked about my research. Then they asked about what I intended to do once I earned a degree. A few asked about my family or other teachers who had left at the same time I did. And a handful asked whether or not I would return to Underwood someday to pick up where I had left off. Most of these questions were straightforward enough, but the last one was tricky because the speaker had meant it sincerely. This was not a joke to them. They actively wanted me to come back and rejoin the fold. It was as though they were saying, "We know you left us, but there's always a place for you here. You can always come back." And what startled me was that there was a piece of me that wished to return to the classroom and its associated camaraderie. There is, after all, nothing like the esprit de corps that emerges from shared struggle against imposing odds.
Yet I also knew, despite such feelings, that while the possibility exists that I would return to Underwood, it is an extremely small one. As I explained to my colleagues, the life of a graduate student or a professional academic may be stressful, but the stress is of a different nature entirely than that of the classroom I had left behind. After teaching classes where students participated actively in discussions without throwing things, yelling profanities, or necessitating phone calls home, the idea of returning to the trenches just is not compelling, and that, after all, is an intrinsic part of the Underwood experience. So when my colleagues asked me if I would come back after getting my Ph.D., I deferred, suggesting that it would depend upon the job market while all the while reaffirming that in this case, the past would not necessarily serve as prologue.
After a little while, the library emptied out. I walked down the hallway past my former classroom, which still had colorful decals of the nine planets scotch taped over the doorway despite having been converted into what I think was an English classroom...or maybe math? It was hard to tell with everything packed away. A few more goodbyes followed, including a promise to return (if asked) for Career Day, though I wonder how many students will really be interested in learning more about the exciting life of a graduate student.
Finally, I stopped in the office to bid farewell to my principal one last time before her summer vacation started and my dissertation work continued. Unlike my old job, where there was often a very clear delineation between work and leisure time, as an academic, it's less clearcut. And so as I walked out of Underwood on that first day of summer, I knew that while my former colleagues had all sorts of vacation plans in the works, I had the same strange blend of activities, both social and academic which go into refining a dissertation, in my future. This is the life I have chosen, the life that could have earned me scorn from my former colleagues but didn't, and to which I return to all the same, hoping that eventually my work will be remembered with equal fondness in both contexts.
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